And then he acted like he'd solved college football. He got lazy on the recruiting trail. He refused to give high school assistants gas money to bring their players to Austin at a time when other schools were paying them $500 to $1000. Never mind trainers and other hanger ons. He wouldn't let his assistants leave the Austin area during the football season, so the only high schools they could visit were in the Hill Country, when all the talent is in DFW and Houston. He told Muschamp he was stepping down after the 2009 season and then didn't. He cock blocked Saban, making sure he didn't resign until after Saban signed the contract for Alabama that had been sitting on his desk unsigned.
At a time when programs were first starting to pay players and their families for unlimited "unofficial" visits Mack refused to extend any offers until summer camps. Then he'd take early bread as part of his strategy to build momentum. Then he'd take bread at the end of the recruiting cycle because he'd already lost on a lot of top targets. Then the recruiting services would overrate the players Texas was taking because of the name.
You give him credit for the national championship. Heck, he came close to winning two if not for Colt's injury.
But the truth is he and Greg Davis almost successfully ruined Vince Young by trying to alter his throwing motion and have him line up under center virtually every snap. It wasn't until after the Missouri game in 2004 - after that embarrassing shutout to OU - and the uninspired play versus the Tigers, that Ray Seals, VY's high school coach, came to Austin and read Mack Brown the riot act for not putting VY in the shotgun and running zone read.
So yes, Mack Brown gets the credit. He should. But in many ways he succeeded in spite of himself.
The real credit from me isn't the national championship or the 10 win seasons or the bowl victories. It was rescuing Texas football from an institutional apathy. Because I'm not sure someone other than Mack Brown and his particular set of gifts could have done it nearly as well. This was a guy who convinced the North Carolina faithful to pony up for what at the time was the Taj Mahal of athletic centers, at North Carolina of all places, while he was going 1-10 for two consecutive seasons to start his tenure. There is no question the guy could sell ice to the Eskimos.